| |||
Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly, Asleep on the black trunk, blowing like a leaf in green shadow. Down the ravine behind the empty house, The cowbells follow one another Into the distances of the afternoon. To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines, The droppings of last year's horses Blaze up into golden stones. I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on. A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. I have wasted my life.
In this one and vicious literary life, the one it takes i suppose - I have been made aware over and over and over again of the fact that James Wright modelled this famous post modern lyric poem after Rilke's more prosaic and formal lyric poem. Not being the one so good at critical thinking, I have made only a few connections between the two, the opening and the ending - which is free candy as far as intellectualism goes. brain fart rubbing itself like yellow smoke upon the windowpane of my carelesness. I have always taken great pleasure, however, in knowing for a fact my winkie is bigger than the one in the photograph included above which often acompanies Rilke's poem on the internet, and in some books of poetry and criticism. I never met james Wright when he was alive, and if I had, would probably not have had the opportunity to compare winkies. But Seeing as so much of modern poetry is masked in intellect, I have developed a theory all modern poetry does is give the male poetic voice a chance to talk about its winkie in esoteric ways. Both these poems address the value of conciousness, the knowing of oneself, and one's winkie, I imagine. Is Rilke saying to the reader, you must change your life because your winkie is smaller than the archaic winkie found in the bust of appallo, or is he reflecting more on the metaphysical undoing of self knowledge? Is wright admitting his life has been nothing more than obsessing about his winkie, or is there something more in divulging to the reader a feeling of having wasted one's life. Both poems juxstapose the sedentary - ie, a statue, fixed, and a man, fixed - both to the earth, while in one the poet speaks of the ethereal, and in the other, a man watches a hawk soar, perhaps looking down upon the field for a mouse, or more likely, trying to gauge the size of wright's winkie, though i am pretty sure the author is fully clothed while lying in the hammock, otherwise, the poem would be entitled, Lying In A Hammock At William Duffy's Farm In Pine Island, Minnesota while a hawk stares at my winkie. In any event, it has come down to this, has it really come dow to nothing greater than this, that we can pull from stone, profound shape and form, only to have it laid upon the wing's of a sentient rapture which is then led through time, eventually to soar in an ever widening gyre above a man who, among many things, understood the nature of profundity, life/death, and perhaps most of all, winkies. |
The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
clarity, precision, discovery. this poem is to poetry, what quantum physics is to an elephant.....well, an elephant who understands quantum physics.
The Red Wheelbarrow
William Carlos Williams
so much depends
upona red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.clarity, precision, discovery. this poem is to poetry, what quantum physics is to an elephant.....well, an elephant who understands quantum physics.
I heard an interesting song on the radio yesterday, about a man who has a bottomless hole behind his barn, and for years, his family and himself have been throwing all their garbage and broken tractors into it. he never can figure how deep it is, so he builds an device from rope and a four claw tub and lowers himself down, when the rope runs out, he cuts it, and begins to fall. the song is told from the perspective of him still falling, which is unique. but he screws it up at the end by offering up some skewed logic - rhetorically incorrect - I'll never believe this hole is bottomless till i hit the bottom - wouldnt that suggest his thinking would not shift, but he would then become a believer. I feel, if Dante Allegro had a john deer and a barn and a hole as such, he would have done something simililar - I myself would have chosen a friend or a dog who knew how to use a handheld, and sit at the top of the hole eating fresh fruit and waiting for the returns.
meanwhile: life is not what you make of it, it is what you make of others' lives.
| 1. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
I'd rather date any old day a girl with petite mal seizures rather than Gran mal seizures because girls with the Gran mals might flail and whop about when you tried to hug them good evening after a hard days work; where as the petite mal girls would just flutter or twist or shudder, very doubtful they would drop dead in your arms. it would be easier to take the petite mal girls to the nice resteraunts, not grunting or choking or stiffining like a board, just a little head rock or a doze off, or at worste, an elbow to the groin of your valet or waiter. yes definately, i would want a petite mal girl. those gran mal girls are too much trouble and create nothing more than worry.
watched fight club last night; as always, captivated from the beginning. Each time i find something new to ponder; though i will admit it is much easier to recognize the psychotic cross over sooner and sooner, to the point where you eventually are merely waiting for brad pit's character to arrive. But i pine for the first time i watched fight club, and wasn't exactly sure of any of it until the security cameras showed ed norton beating his own ass in the parking garage. now i watch it more for the narrative, which is pretty amazing, a long ranting poem,not unlike some from Ginsberg or kerouac., and of course the fight scenes are remarkable, half the movie being left to the imagination. i do wonder if there are inconsistancies in the perception of the 'army' populating the project mayhem - then i ponder if they are as unreal as brad pitts character. The entire movie reminds me of the displacement found in lewis carol's work, or even TS eliot's. the modernists/post modernists certainly had a way with misdirection. anyway, my thoughts on another successful viewing of one of my favorite films.
also, the soundtrack is premium.
haiku for the diminishing return
gold coin placed in mouth
we must learn to travel light
the big lebowski
It has been a long time since I blogged here. I know thousands, if not millions have been wondering why that is; well, mostly because I have been concentrating on other things. I know letting this information out is an important part of my relationship with the millions, if not billions of readers who have been missing me so.
I think the whole dead George thing put me off of blogging for a while, as well, I have been trying to get a manuscript together, so, when writing at all, it is directed towards that goal. This morning I have two things on my mind, both having to do with the concept of complete and total ignorant behavior - not on my part - but on the part of others.
Because I ate at the Golden Coral last night9don't ask) and because that is where Watauga eats on a Saturday night, at least the ones who were eating there last night; because of this fact, I was privy to conversations, most benign, but one or two which discouraged me greatly. I heard a lily white foursome talking about how obama was going to send all of their tax money to Africa and how pretty soon every Negro in America would be on some special social security plan, I assume, their minds, it was a secret agenda Negro SS plan. Cringe. I wanted to sit down with them and briefly explain the way our government works, the due process of bill legislation and so forth. It just didn't seem worth the time or the anger I would have absorbed. Still, that kind of ignorance discourages me to the point of anger.
Secondly: I am totally dumbfounded by the number of "screen time" computers at the library designed specifically for kids my kid's age. There is a giant wide screen behind the story time stage where a child can play mid level violence based theme games. There are six computers and dozens of individual games a child can select from just to the other side of the giant screen. I am thinking how the decision to provide this in a public library with public funds is a HORRIBLE IDEA, and how this fact about the library and my experience at the golden Coral are probably interconnected on a very simple level. Ignorance is not hereditary, it is bred. So, I am announcing my decision to run for whatever elected position it is making decisions about what we put in the public library and what we put at the buffet at GC - as there were no steak fries, and that breaks my heart. These things need to change. granted I did spend an hour in the library reading a book on abnormal psychology while my kid played hobbit death match with a retarded kid.(burn in hell, I know). I don't want to address the issue of parental responsibility right now, as the library is also being used as a giant baby sitter by many people who are afraid of Negro presidents but not the GC.
Peace out
bve
it was very hot a george the dead's ceremony, many old greek ladies, layered in fat and makeup - which smeared down their faces and onto their fat and sweaty chests sat in the back of the church and gossipped - between their sobbing and genuflexing - I was a pallbearer, and satin the front where the waft of lilacs and incense, along with the waft of george the dead, mixed into a sickeningly sweet and putrid aroma - it reminded me, and I have no idea why, of the poem by Dylan Thomas: The Force That Through the Green Fuse Drives. It is an amazingly compicated riff, one forever intriguing me. i imagine george the dead fully understands this poem at present moment, or did, at the moment present before his death. George the dead will be forever with us in memory. For now, he is my stupid dead friend.
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.
